World Religion Textbooks: 2 Book Reviews

In today's environment of global communication and global politics, understanding the religions of the world is essential to understanding world events. Christianity dominates the religious thinking of the West; Islam has become a significant factor in the politics of the Middle East and elsewhere. Israel's conflicts with its neighbors have a religious component, and in Asia, the rise of Japan and Chinese as major economic powers must be considered in light of the religions-or lack thereof-that dominate those countries. Yet religion by its very nature is a highly emotional issue, and writers are likely to have their own bias and agendas when they set out to write about the religions of the world. Two recent works, A Christian Introduction to World Religions: Neighboring Faiths by Winfried Corduan, and Religions of the World by Lewis Hopfe and Mark Woodward, seek to provide a survey of major world religions. This research evaluates the two books, compares and contrasts their styles and content, and seeks to provide an understanding of how the bias of the authors has influenced how the information is presented, and thus how readers are likely to interpret the content.

Both texts begin with a chapter concerning the nature of religion itself, and then move into individual chapters on individual religions. After discussing religion and reasons that religion is pervasive across cultures, Corduan's book moves

Related Essays

Osama Bin Laden .... was are taught that the entire world should convert to .... Whoever follows a religion that is not Islam .... such extremist teachings from textbooks, particularly those .... (1267 5 )

Creationism and Evolution .... they will consider adopting creationist textbooks," and cites .... compelling explanations of how the world works. .... but it seems positively destructive to religion. .... (1574 6 )

Hertzl .... violations of civil rights based on race, religion or politics .... bill of rights to all Jews of the world. .... Holocaust, "In the former ninth-grade textbooks, 60% of .... (1515 6 )

Mass Culture & Gender .... national identity suffered a staggering defeat after World War II .... is a kind of modern religion which casts .... Normal science is documented in scientific textbooks. .... (6351 25 )

The Muslim Community in Los Angeles .... the period of the Great Depression and World war II .... prejudice shown by Americans toward their religion and their .... Changes were made in the textbooks, and Hamdan .... (3311 13 )

rity. The traditional view held by those who are themselves religious is that a god or other spiritual being revealed religion and religious truths to human beings at some point in their development.[3] This last point certainly applies to Corduan, who in his introduction discusses the theory that man may be psychologically predisposed to invent religion: Having a natural feeling of absolute dependence does not justify my inferring that religion is nothing but a feeling; there may very well be an independently existing God who has instilled that feeling in me.[4] This is, perhaps the ultimate problem with seeking to understand religion. Religion is, by its nature, based on faith, not rationality. Faith in an afterlife, faith in a personal god, faith in a pantheon of spirits who can affect one's immediate life, faith in priests or prophets, faith that cannot be explained or proved. Even if proved beyond doubt that a predisposition to religion is a chemical response generated by the brain, those of faith would argue, as Corduan does, that such a predisposition was put there by a creator. Aids and Hindrances in the Texts As noted in the title, Corduan's book takes a Christian

Category: Philosophy - W